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Anne Tucker

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Anne Tucker teaches and researches contracts, corporations, securities regulations, and investment funds.

Tucker’s research focuses on three areas of business law. The first is on the regulation and administration of funds (both public and private funds) and how pooled investments can achieve significant personal and social ends, such as retirement security and private funding for social entrepreneurship. Second, she focuses on impact investing and contract terms that reinforce impact objectives alongside financial returns. Third, she studies corporate governance, including the role of institutional investors as shareholders. Read More

Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook in his column, Do Activist Investors Target Women C.E.O.’s?, asked earlier this week  if the gender of the CEO influences the target of activist shareholders.  

Only 23 women lead companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Yet at least a quarter of them have fallen into the cross hairs of activist investors.

The article references Patricia Sellers observations in Fortune last month regarding corporate raider Nelson Peltz and his targeted attacks on PepsiCo lead by Indra Nooyi and Mondelez International lead by CEO Irene Rosenfeld as well as his current demands on DuPont, with Ellen Kullman as chairman and CEO.

In the absence of correlating data about female CEO’s and weaker company performance, the question lingers is there something besides performance that prompts the targeting of these companies?  To explain the question the article references several studies that report perception differences in competence, risk and performance based solely on gender, with, women on the losing end of these perception biases.

As I think is a common tendency, I gravitate towards information that relates to what I am personally thinking about, experiencing or interested in at the moment.  Earlier on this blog…

I am a list maker.  I make daily to do lists, grocery lists, research plans, workout schedules (that quickly get jettisoned) and  complicated child care matrices necessary in two-career families.  How else am I supposed to remember and keep on my radar all of the things that I am supposed to be doing now, or doing when I have time, or things that I can’t forget to do in the future?  One area where I feel deficient is in planning my conference travel/attendance. It always feels either a little ad hoc (ohh I got an invitation and I never say no to those!) or a little out habit (once you have presented at a conference it is easier to be asked to participate in future panels). Rarely does it feel like a part of an intentional plan for the year where I set out to prioritize conference A or break into conference B.  

Realizing that this year there are 3 corporate law events within 10 days of each other is seriously making me reconsider my approach.  I need a conference list– a way to plan for the coming year, prioritize opportunities and frankly, schedule grandparent visits…

New reading recommendation:  The (Un)Enforcement of Corporate Officers’ Duties, by Megan Shaner at Univ. of Oklahoma COL, published in UC Davis Law Review, November 2015.

Abstract:  

Over the past few decades, officers have arguably become some of the most important individuals in the corporation. From the implosions of Enron and WorldCom, to the success of companies like Apple and Microsoft, to the Wall Street crisis that sunk the world into near global recession, corporate officers have played a role in each of these storylines and countless (albeit lesser known) others. In spite of the well-publicized scandals, officers continue to be given wide latitude to carry out their role of managing the day-to-day operations of their companies. The primary constraint on this power under state corporate law is the imposition of fiduciary obligations. Fiduciary duties thus play a vital role in checking the considerable power and authority of officers. Fiduciary duties will only affect officer behavior, however, if there is an effective enforcement scheme that holds officers accountable. This Article discusses how the development of corporate doctrine, coupled with the dynamic in today’s corporate management has created impediments and disincentives for the enforcement of officer fiduciary

…

One week after the SEC levied the largest dark pool trading violation fine against USB, a group of nine banks (including Fidelity, JP Morgan, BlackRock, etc.) introduced a new dark pool platform, an independent venture called Luminex Trading & Analytics.  Dark trading pools are linked to the role of high frequency trading and the notion that certain buyers and sellers should not jump the queue and shouldn’t be the first to buy or sell in the face of a large order. The financial backers of Luminex were quoted in a Bloomberg article describing it as a platform “where the original purpose of dark pools, letting investors buy and sell shares without showing their hand to others, will go on without interference.”

The announcement raises public scrutiny about dark pools, but among financial circles (like those at ZeroHedge, it is being touted as a smart self-regulatory move by the major mutual funds to prevent the money leach to HFT’s, which some seeing as the beginning of the end for HFTs. 

If you are looking for more resources on dark pools and HFTs– there are two brand new SSRN postings on the subject:

Financial reforms/un-reforms depending upon your view are unsurprisingly set to be front and center in some upcoming debates.  Here are two interesting articles on the upcoming fight on financial measures taked onto must-pass bills like the budget, the exposure game and the likely resulting pressure.  Either way, financial regulation is keyed to be a big news cycle item in the upcoming political season.

These two articles just state the stance of the Obama Administration– please leave a note in the comments if you have any sources stating the opposition view.  Would love to present a balanced view of this, and am asking for the reader’s help to do so on this time-crunched Wednesday.

Anne Tucker

I had very limited time at AALS this year (unfortunately) but I still walked away with some great ideas (and a chance to say hello to a few, but not enough, friendly faces).  I am borrowing from many ideas shared in the panel cited below, as well as a few of my own.  As many of you prepare to teach BA/Corporations for the spring (or making notes on how to do it next time), here are a few fun new resources to help illustrate common concepts:

  • HBO’s The Newsroom.  A hostile takeover, negotiations with a white knight– all sorts of corporate drama unfolded on HBO’s Season 3 of The Newsroom.   I couldn’t find clips on youtube, but episode recaps (like this) are available and provide a good reference point/story line/hypo/exam problem for class.
  • This American Life– Wake Up Now Act 2 (Dec. 26, 2014).  This brief radio segment/podcast tells the story of two investors trying to reduce the pay of a company CEO.  The segment discusses board of director elections, board duties, board

    • …

    We are all familiar with a distinguishing features of investing in operating companies and investing in mutual funds: sale of stock in operating companies and redemption at NAV (net asset value) in mutual funds.  An interesting article (Mutual Fund Liquidity and Fiduciary Conflicts of Interest)1 was recently brought to my attention which argues that the liquidity costs of the redemption model disadvantages long-term investors– those investors who stay in the fund.  

    Redemption of mutual fund shares requires the fund to maintain liquidity (uninvested assets) in order to supply the NAV to any departing investor.  The required liquidity extracts a small cost on the fund for each exit.  This cost, small when evaluated for a single trade, becomes significant in the aggregate.  Trading and liquidity cost estimates range from $10-17 billion annually, costs that are born exclusively by the investors who stay in the fund. This means that long-term investors, particularly those investors who are relatively locked into their mutual funds such as retirement investors (a group I refer to in my scholarship as Citizen Shareholders) are subsidizing the dominance of the exit strategy for other retail investors.  This has deep implications for the arguments advanced by…

    I recently participated in an institutional investor round table where one of the topics of the day was high frequency trading. Although embarrassed to do so, I will admit that I had to do some serious groundwork on this topic because I had heretofore largely avoided it in any substantive way. If you (or your students) are in the position I was in just a few weeks ago, this post may be a good starting point to understanding a very complex and interested set of issues.

    Being new to the high frequency trading debate, I needed to build a basic understanding of the issues. If you haven’t read Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys (or anything other than this delightful synopsis courtesy of the NYT Magazine) check out Forbes’ explanation of high frequency trading.  Even if YOU don’t need it, this is a great reference for students interested in the topic.  

    Of course, another starting point was the flash crash of 2010, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 1000 points in a matter of minutes.  The flash crash wasn’t the start of high frequency trading, but it was an event that highlighted the role it plays in…

    National Business Law Scholars Conference

    Thursday & Friday, June 4-5, 2015
    Seton Hall University School of Law, Newark, NJ

    This is the sixth annual meeting of the NBLSC, a conference which annually draws together legal scholars from across the United States and around the world. We welcome all scholarly submissions relating to business law. Presentations should focus on research appropriate for publication in academic journals, law reviews, and should make a contribution to the existing scholarly literature. We will attempt to provide the opportunity for everyone to actively participate. Junior scholars and those considering entering the legal academy are especially encouraged to participate. For additional information, please email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu.

    Call for Papers

    To submit a presentation, email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu with an abstract or paper by February 13, 2015. Please title the email “NBLSC Submission – {Name}.” If you would like to attend, but not present, email Professor Chaffee with an email entitled “NBLSC Attendance.” Please specify in your email whether you are willing to serve as a commentator or moderator. A conference schedule will be circulated in late April.

     Conference Organizers:

    Barbara Black (The University of Cincinnati College of…